The Girl in the Road Read online

  Reshmi found a group of women pilgrims camping in the street. She sat with them and tried to sleep, but the city was already awake, so she spent the day wandering far afield, across the river and back, before collapsing from fatigue in the street. This episode in Madurai became central to her literary imagination. How beautiful and revolting sex was. How its juices are both nectar and poison. For a year afterward she eschewed “shadow languages” and spoke only Sanskrit because she was convinced it was the fundamental mother language, the language that most closely reflected divine order, where each word was synonymous with its meaning and could, in theory, be regenerated ex nihilo by an infant who grew up in a natural paradise devoid of linguistic influence. She argued that Sanskrit words arose spontaneously in the mouths of babes all over the world. Her favorite mantra was the Sahanavavatu because her favorite time of day was morning.

  I start singing it because it’s morning. The first two syllables, “saha,” remind me of the sound the barefoot girl made. I don’t know if she was real, but my glotti responded as if she was, so that’s a point toward her actuality. My glotti couldn’t recognize it only because Sanskrit isn’t spoken anymore.

  I pull out my scroll and look up “saha.” It has two contextual meanings.

  One is powerful.

  One is part of the construction let us be together, or simply, with.

  It’s funny that this cyclone is named Geeta. That’s my Muthashi’s name. I remember when I first told her I was dating Mohini. It was the dry season, hot, right before the monsoon, in the last week of May. I was standing on the footpath by the Manimala River downhill from the clinic. The river was just a colloid of algae and pollen. Trees dropped their seeds into the dark green emulsion, which, suspended, would send out roots, and soon the river would become a movable garden.

  Muthashi came down the ghats, holding up her peacock-blue sari by the hem. Her hair was white and pulled back in a bun, and she insisted on wearing gigantic square glasses instead of getting corrective laser surgery, which was the only thing I’d ever known her to be irrational about. Something about a fear of not being able to blink. Around her neck was a thin silver chain with a small silver cross—her nod to her Catholic mother, though her husband was Hindu, as her father had been.

  When Muthashi joined me, we didn’t kiss or embrace. We were still in the early stages of our reconciliation.

  You’re home, she said.

  Just for a few days. I wanted to surprise you.

  Muthashan said you had something to tell me.

  Yes. I’ve met a woman named Mohini. She’s a hijra. We’re going to live together.

  Muthashi shook her head in slow assent. Are you going to get married? she asked.

  Maybe. I haven’t asked her yet.

  You’re too young, she said.

  I’m twenty-four.

  Too young, she repeated. I married your grandfather at age twenty-nine. You should wait, Meena.

  I looked out over the river. I’m ready for the monsoon, I said.

  So are the patients, said Muthashi. The heat is terrible for them. We’re almost out of turmeric.

  I’ll go get more, I said. I knew Muthashi hated patronizing the nearest source, a big air-conditioned market called SpyceWallah. The place she liked to go was all the way in Kozhencherry. And she was almost eighty years old.

  That would be a big help, Meena, she said. Then again: You’re too young to marry. How well do you know Mohini? Do you know her family?

  I’ve met her mother, Seeta. She’s great. She owns a beauty salon.

  I saw this register on her face: NB, Not Brahmin. She ventured, And her father?

  Died on a construction site when Mohini was three.

  (DNB, Definitely Not Brahmin. But she wasn’t going to say anything, because she knew it wasn’t politically correct anymore.) Where is the rest of her family?

  Her grandmother lives in Chennai, I said.

  How do you know Mohini will be faithful to you? You know her kind.

  I focused on the river and counted to ten. This was an emotional management technique I had learned as a trainee at the women’s clinic.

  What kind do you mean, Muthashi?

  Hijras.

  So despite all political progress, social advancement, and appearance of acceptance, here was my grandmother speaking the voice of prejudice. It had to be something. If not caste, if not class, then gender. Children must un-train their elders over and over again.

  I forced my voice to remain calm: That’s a misconception, Muthashi. Hijras used to be sex workers because they were outcasts. They weren’t allowed to live as other people do or work jobs like other people worked.

  They could sing, said Muthashi. At the birth of boys.

  But that opportunity didn’t come often. And then there was lots of competition for those opportunities and most were shut out.

  Muthashi was silent for a while. She did that when I out-argued her.

  Then she said, A hijra came to sing at Gabriel’s birth.

  She waited for me to object to her saying his name. I didn’t. This was also a feature of the reconciliation: that we could begin to mention the names of the unmentionable.

  She said, We held the ceremony outside, on a field where boys used to play cricket. Your Muthashan was holding the baby when one of my friends came to tell me that there was a hijra outside asking to give praises. I would have dismissed him but Muthashan said, Geeta, let him come. I told my friend okay and then Muthashan gave me the baby and went to the microphone and said, Now we’re going to hear a song. And the hijra came into our midst. Everyone got very quiet. Even Gabriel got quiet. The hijra was dressed in a bright orange sari with gold edging. He turned out to be quite good. He sang a beautiful song to bless Gabriel and then he came forth to kiss him, which Muthashan instructed me to allow. I was happy with him then, and we paid him. But then he continued near the fringes of the party asking men if they wanted to take him home, and it upset quite a few people. I had to ask him to leave. I think he had been drinking.

  She finished the story as if to say, See, that explains my feelings.

  I said, If you must know, Mohini has never worked as a sex worker.

  Muthashi shook her head. She said, I’m only bringing this up for your own benefit, Meena. You must think these things through. You’re like your father. Very impulsive.

  We stood on the footpath for a few minutes, quiet, looking at the river. I spotted a turtle on the other side but didn’t say anything. It was motionless in the sun, waiting for the monsoon to come so that it could swim in a fresh river.

  It’s good to have you home, Muthashi said, starting back up the footpath to the ghats. I can use you. Mrs. Nair just went into labor. She and her husband will be arriving from Alleppey within the hour. You remember what to prepare for a birth?

  I wagged my head without looking at her.

  Now I’m hanging like a Christmas ornament in the middle of the Arabian Sea, riding out a cyclone. I could sit here and indulge in thoughts that my grandparents might be dead. I could ideate the manner and timing of their deaths for maximum pathos. They’re the only relatives I have left. But they’re one step removed from me, a secondhand report on my nature. I want real parents. I want to know firsthand.

  Mohini and I start talking again. The part of me that is her is very useful to me. She always has helpful things to say, especially because she lost a parent too; though she always displayed a casual relationship to the loss that was hard to believe. I thought it should manifest as a major dysfunction and was always waiting for it to do so. But in the meantime, at least she had the vocabulary to understand me. I return again to our conversation of how my mother is like the goddess in the innermost chamber.

  You’re seeking your mother on the Trail itself, she says to me.

  What do you mean?

  You don’t think of the Trail as a temple because it’s not enclosed. But you’re passing through chambers. You’re penetrating deeper.


  It doesn’t feel that way.

  I know.

  It feels like I’m doing something incredibly unnecessary.

  And what would you rather be doing?

  I don’t know. Being in Africa.

  But you’d have to get there first, and that’s what you’re doing.

  All right.

  Meena, what do you want to find at the end of this journey?

  The woman who killed my parents.

  This is important.

  I imagine so.

  No need to be sarcastic, Meena. What would you do if you found her?

  I don’t know. Ask her why.

  Be honest.

  I’d want to kill her.

  That’s understandable.

  But there’s no point because my parents are dead.

  Being dead and being findable are not mutually exclusive.

  So what would I be finding?

  You’re your mother’s issue. She made you. So whoever she is, is also you.

  I wouldn’t know how to begin.

  You don’t have to know how. You’re already deep in.

  When I open my eyes again, I’m in complete darkness. I forget where I am. I’m cool, damp, naked. Then I remember: I’m underfuckingwater. I feel in the dark for my bag, pull out one of my sunbits, and squeeze it. The gentle yellow light fills the pod. But outside there’s nothing but blackness. I wish I had a mother. The mothered never get into situations like this.

  I don’t know how long I’ve slept. Anywhere from two to six hours. Enough for Geeta’s arm to pass, I hope. The cord is at its end and the polymer plug is tight against the sphincter. I touch the skin of the pod, and it’s much harder, which means I must be down a full seven meters.

  A grid of silver shoots by. It was probably a school of fish. If I sit still and watch, my mind’s eye makes a composite of what floats by, filling in what I can’t see. What if I just stayed here and enjoyed the view of the abyss? One day, they’d find a cord attached to a sphere seven meters deep and pull it up and find my body curled in the fetal position. I’d chosen to lie down in the road.

  Something big moves past and I jump back violently. Stupid. I could still split this thing open if the pressure’s concentrated enough so I have to be fucking careful. I try to reconstruct what I saw: a dolphin or shark, maybe. I had an impression of bulk. It was not a fish.

  I squeeze my sunbit again but it does nothing except reflect back the walls of the pod. I hold my hands around it to concentrate the beam outward. I sit still. And then again, something bulky passes by and this time it actually hits and indents the skin. I kneel into attack position, which doesn’t strike me as illogical but rather simply that if this thing is going to make another pass, I have to be ready. I keep the sunbit trained into the darkness.

  And then right in front of my face a handprint appears in the skin of the pod.

  I scream.

  But the handprint is gone, as soon as it appeared.

  A hallucination from oxygen deprivation. It must be. I need to get up to the surface because suddenly I feel like I’m in a black womb swarming with ghosts.

  I reach up to take hold of the plug and encircle my other hand around it to push up against the sphincter at the same time. I pull the cord down and so pull the pod up. After a meter, my arms ache and I have to stop. I shake out my arms. I take a deep breath. I reposition the sunbit in my lap and grab hold of the cord again.

  After sixty seconds I can see the water above me lighten. It looks blue, which is a good sign because it might mean the sun is out. I want to go quickly because I feel like I can’t breathe even though I can.

  A circle of white opens at the top of my pod. It’s air. I stop myself from rending it open immediately. Instead I pull the pod up flush with the Trail so that it’s hanging off of it like a bubble on the edge of a wand. Then, in my greatest feat yet, I pull myself and my bag up onto the Trail while still inside the pod like a fetus in an amniotic sac.

  I peel the pod open with my thumbnail and climb out with my bag and set it down on the scale and crawl out naked into the wind. The clouds are ragged, low, and moving fast overhead. I take out my scroll to check that the cyclone is past (it is—spending itself against the Iranian coast now, only a Category 1) and then set it down on the scale while I pull the rest of the pod out of the sea. The sea is still choppy and the Trail is still bucking and the hinge nearest me snaps up and my scroll spins into the water.

  Immediately I know it’s gone.

  I can’t go after it. I have to attend to my desalinators, my kiln, and my pod, without which I would literally die.

  So my scroll is gone.

  I stick my knife blade-first into the scale so hard that it stays there. The gusts are lessening now, and there are patches of sunlight on the ocean. I can see them far away like oases.

  I search for my scroll so that I can make a list of what I’ve lost and then realize I don’t have anything to make a list with.

  I have to tick them off in my head, in order of threat to corporeal survival.

  1. The ability to visualize where I am on a map. I still have my pozit, which can give a position and calculate the distance between two positions, like between here and Nariman Point. But it’s a simple numerical display. It doesn’t show whole maps.

  2. Information on oncoming weather, e.g., cyclones. Now I have to prove my Keralite blood by intuiting all things maritime.

  3. My Element Diary. Which seems like a juvenile exercise in this light.

  4. My survival guides. I’ll have to get by on what I remember and by what seasteaders tell me.

  5. My equipment manuals. I’m glad I read the pod manual three times while I was underwater. As for the kiln manual and the solar plate manual and all the other manuals, they’re gone.

  6. My music and literature. I’ve lost everything of entertainment value, which I’d been considering my umbilical cord to sanity. No more Mahabharata or poetry of Kuta Sesay or essays of Reshmi West.

  The last loss is the least threat to corporeal survival but it hurts the most. I’ll have to make other connections to sanity. I’ll have to work harder to take care of myself. I’ll have to generate my own mother like a blow-up doll and make her tell me stories.

  Mariama

  Shiro

  The night we left for the Ethiopian border at last, you couldn’t sleep. You whispered to me, pouring all your thoughts into me like I was a jug.

  I’m not sure where we’ll live, you said. We’ll have to stay in a hostel and explore Addis for a few days, get a feel for the place. Piazza is supposed to be best, for character—but then there are all these new developments nearby, just outside the main city, and they have Internet and air conditioning. But then I keep reading that Bole Road is still the best place to get a flat. I have enough money for a few months. Then I’ll have to find a job. Maybe in one of the art galleries or English-language bookstores.

  I just liked listening to you talk, Yemaya. Your voice was fluid and deep, like the lowermost current of the ocean. It made me thirsty. I still felt terrible about what I’d said that had made you hit me, and so I kept looking for a way to bring us back together, to make us whole again.

  You said, Will I actually be able to make a home? I’m only twenty years old. What if I’m discriminated against? I look Oromo, and the Oromo and the Amhara have a bad history. Maybe it’ll be different because I’m Wolof. I need to find Amharic language classes. Till then, I can get by on my English. I need to take care of myself.

  I tried to wrap my arms around your body, but my arms weren’t long enough. You rolled on your back and I climbed on top of you and laid on your chest, and tried to encircle my arms around so that they met underneath you.

  Finally your eyes closed. You didn’t lift your arms to hold me; they splayed out to either side. While you slept, you muttered Francis’s name, but as much as that roused the jealousy of the kreen, I didn’t wake you. I understood that it was my time to take care of you.

&nbs
p; We crossed into Ethiopia at Gallabat. I was clutching the railing and trying to memorize every detail, to understand with my own eyes what sort of place Ethiopia was, and how to distinguish it from all the other places I’d seen, but it was too late and I was too sleepy to make any real conclusions. Then I slept from Gallabat to Shihedi—I remember Shihedi only by the dim yellow lamplights that measured out my sleep—and from Shihedi on to Gonder.

  You hardly slept at all. My body could sense that, because we had come to know each other’s rhythms so well. When the trucks finally parked in a dusty lot, you were already sitting up, staring into space. Then you saw me and said, We’re here, little girl.

  Ethiopia!

  Yes, you said. You weren’t as excited as I thought you would be.

  But I told myself it was because we weren’t in Addis yet. We were first staying in Gonder, and then heading to Lalibela, and then finally to the capital city. Our long journey was almost over. I wanted it to be over but at the same time I wanted to relish every last moment of it.